Heartland

too full of your guilt and need to talk to someone about what you had done. I had had a long time to live with my guilt, and until now, I had never been overtaken with such a need to talk about it. And yet, in this room with Vivienne, I wanted to tell her what had happened. I wanted someone to know my side of the story, before it got lost in the noise of the Chorus.

'He gave me the symbols of his office because I was an outsider, because I had no stake in the outcome of the contest for the Crown. I didn't care who wore it next; it wasn't my fight. But I was uniquely positioned to be an. . ' I searched for the right word, falling through a sudden tear in the nebulous veil of the Chorus. Falling and finding myself in a place without shadows, a place of clarity.'. . arbiter, I suppose, an arbiter of the ultimate selection for leadership of the organization.'

I started pacing, my legs working off some of the energy coursing through my nervous system. I had been unlocked, and Vivienne's key had unleashed a torrent of words and thoughts. The Ace of Cups, spilling its water. The flood of life, unrestrained. I didn't want to think about where this desire was coming from; I wanted to let it all out.

'Philippe knew there were members of the organization who were actively plotting to remove him. But as long as he remained bound to his office, they were forced to skulk in the shadows and attack his power in an indirect way. When their effort to create a new Hierarch failed, they fell back to a secondary position: mortally wounding him by wounding the Land. His strength reduced, they could more readily best him physically. If it came to that.'

'Did it?'

I shook my head. 'No, he beat them to it. He died before they could take his Crown.'

'Giving it to you.'

'Yes.'

'And it isn't a physical gift.'

'No. It is his. . '

'Essence?'

'Essentially.'

'And what are you supposed to do with it?'

I stopped pacing. 'I don't know.'

She nodded. 'No wonder Marielle brought you to see me.'

'Excuse me?'

She closed her eyes for a moment, and the room felt darker. All the exhaustion of the day came racing back to the forefront of my brain. On the desk, the tiny drawing I had scribbled no longer looked like anything important. It didn't look like the Ace of Cups at all, and a tiny part of me wondered what I had been thinking.

Something had definitely changed in the last moment, but I didn't feel like I had been conned, or that the words had been taken against my will. Quite the opposite. It had felt liberating to tell her, and now that it was done, I was glad to be rid of the weight. But whatever glamour had been on me, it was gone now. In the back of my throat, something clicked shut and my tongue felt heavy in my mouth again.

She sat down at the desk and laid her hand on what I had thought was the mouse pad beside the keyboard. It glowed beneath her fingers, a green light outlining her hand.

'What rank did you achieve when you were actively part of the fraternity, M. Markham?'

'Please, Michael.' We might as well be on first name basis, after that confession I had unleashed. My tongue still felt a bit wooden. 'I made Journeyman.'

'Seventh Degree?'

I flushed. 'No. Only Third.'

'And how long have you been gone?' The computer came out of sleep mode, and the light from the LCD screen illuminated her face, highlighting the shadows under her eyes. 'Did you study during that time?'

'Five, no, six years now. I've been teaching myself since then.'

'Ah. Venefice.'

'I wish you wouldn't put it that way.'

'You were-are-an unrecognized and self-taught magus, who was given access to the teachings of the society and who, while retaining those teachings, no longer answers to the hierarchy to which you once swore an oath. I don't know; what name would you give to that sort of person if not 'traitor'?'

'How about 'free radical'?'

'All right, solute frater.' With just a touch of sarcasm in her voice. 'Let me ask you a few questions.'

She moved her hand across the pad, mousing with her fingers, and the flat screen on the wall came to life, displaying a line drawing of a human figure, but overlaid with the ten spheres of the Tree of the Sephiroth. The sphere at the top of the tree floated over the figure's head. This was Kether, the holy crown at the apex, and it wasn't by accident that it appeared to be a halo. Much like the representation of saints in medieval art and iconography.

Like the saints in the watercolors and stained glass at the Chapel of Glass.

'What's this?' I asked.

'You tell me,' she said. 'What does it look like to you?'

'It looks like an overlay of the Sephiroth on an anatomical drawing. Like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man without all the geometric distractions. It looks modern though, like some aspiring occult student did some sketching and didn't bother with doodling a bunch of commentary around the margins.'

'Very likely,' she acknowledged. 'But what does it represent?'

'It's the symbolic representation of mankind. Rather, humanity, if you prefer a more gender-neutral word. We stand upon the globe of Malkuth, and the forces and energies of the Sephirotic realm travel up through our bodies so that we may attain the enlightened awareness of Kether.'

She selected an icon on her screen and the picture changed. The figure was no longer standing with its arms outstretched over the Sephiroth of Geburah and Chesed — Strength and Mercy. Now, the figure was in the traditional crucifixion pose, and resting in his open and upturned palms were the globes of Binah and Chokhmah, the spheres of Understanding and Wisdom. His head was bent at an angle, and the sphere of Kether was a solar disk pressing down on his neck, like a vast weight.

A dim line went through the man's neck, separating the head from the body. It was the line on the tree between Binah and Chokhmah, and the center of the line corresponded to the base of the man's throat. Right where Daath lay, the entrance to the nightside of the tree. The Abyss where the Qliphoth dwelt, where they waited for the innocent to call them forth.

'And this one?' she asked.

I swallowed the lump forming in my throat, a sympathetic memory of the night in the Pacific Northwest woods where I was initiated into magick and touched the Tree of the Sephiroth. I made the mistake of touching that dark spot between Binah and Chokhmah. 'The ascended martyr,' I croaked, as I turned away from the screen. 'The one who knows he cannot sustain the weight of the tree. But he bears it anyway, and so it crushes him.'

I closed my eyes, but the image was still there, and the similarities between Vivienne's picture and the enormous Christ figure in the Chapel of Glass were readily apparent. Head bowed by the weight of the crown, no longer supported by Strength and Mercy, but holding Understanding and Wisdom in his bloodied hands. This was the magus who Knew, who had Seen beyond the veil and understood the nature of the Divine. This was the man who died, knowing who he was and what he would become. I had thought the figure had been sleeping, but there wasn't much distinction between sleep and understanding.

Philippe Emonet understood. Hierarch of the Watchers, Architect of Architects. I am the Silent Guardian Who Waits. In that down-turned face, in the serenity that wreathed the slumbering visage, was peace.

When I had killed him, when I reached into his heart and broke his soul, he had smiled.

'I am the daughter of the Scholar,' Vivienne said after a moment. She spoke quietly enough that I had to